Book: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, narrated by Kirsten Potter

Published September 2014 by Random House Audio|10 hours, 30 minutes

Where I Got It: I borrowed the audio book from the library

Series: None

Genre: Adult Apocalyptic/Post-Apocalytpic

An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur’s chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread. Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside an apartment, watching out the window as cars clog the highways, gunshots ring out, and life disintegrates around them.

Fifteen years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. Together, this small troupe moves between the settlements of an altered world, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Written on their caravan, and tattooed on Kirsten’s arm is a line from Star Trek: “Because survival is insufficient.” But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave.

Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty. As Arthur falls in and out of love, as Jeevan watches the newscasters say their final good-byes, and as Kirsten finds herself caught in the crosshairs of the prophet, we see the strange twists of fate that connect them all. A novel of art, memory, and ambition, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it.

Station Eleven is one of those books that I feel is sort of a buzz-y kind of book, and for some reason, it was a book that I didn’t pick up until recently.  I am not completely sure how I feel about it, though.

I thought the non-linear timeline was really interesting, especially since we see Jeevan, Kirsten, Clark, Miranda and Arthur throughout the book.  We’d get one person for a while, and then we’d get someone else for a while, and it’s the death of Arthur and the impact he had on people against the backdrop of a flu pandemic that results in a lot of death. Which is an interesting idea, but I am definitely not enchanted with it the way other people are.

I listened to the audio book, and while it worked fine for an audio book, there was something about it (that FOR ME), didn’t quite translate to audio.  Kirsten Potter was fine as a narrator- I couldn’t figure out why she sounded so familiar…until I realized that she narrated If I Stay by Gayle Forman.  I liked her narration for that book, and I wish some of the emotion in her narration for that book were in her narration for this book.

I also spent some wondering what happened to certain characters, particularly Jeevan, who we saw at the beginning, and didn’t see for quite some time.

Everything is very much connected, and I am somewhat amazed at how connected so many of the characters were. But I was kind of expecting something more interesting.  I was interested enough to keep listening to the end, and I’m a little intrigued by the idea that art and culture is important in the worst of times, but for some reason, it felt a little overwhelming at times.  And I was surprised she didn’t draw more connections to Shakespeare.  Unless it was there and I missed it, because I remember nothing from the little Shakespeare I did read in high school.

And I did find myself, particularly with the last couple of discs, wondering how she was going to tie everything up. It was an okay ending, and I liked that there was a little bit of hope that the world was starting to re-build.  But…I don’t know.  Something about the ending was also a little too unresolved for my liking, and I’m usually okay with unresolved endings.

I would like to see a Station Eleven comic book/graphic novel, though.  I want this to be a thing, because that is something I’d want to read.

2 stars.  I get why people like it, and there were things I liked about it,  but I felt a little too disconnected from the book.

Book: Dangerous Deception by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl, narrated by Kevin Collins & Khristine Hvam

Published May 2015 by Hachette Audio|8 hours, 27 minutes

Where I Got It: I got the audio book from audible.com

Series: Dangerous Creatures #2

Genre: YA Paranormal

From the world of Beautiful Creatures–a dangerous new tale of love and magic continues in the sequel to Dangerous Creatures.

Love is ten kinds a crazy, right?
Let me put it to you this way: If you can get away, run. Don’t walk.
Because once you’re exposed, you’ll never get a Siren outta your head.

Some loves are cursed. Others are…dangerous. Especially the love between wannabe rocker and quarter Incubus, Wesley “Link” Lincoln, and Dark Caster, Siren, and bonafide bad girl, Ridley Duchannes.

But now Ridley is missing, and Link was with her-right up until she vanished. Determined to find her, Link reunites with his New York bandmates and the mysterious Lennox Gates, who wants Rid for himself. Together they travel to the deep south, find the crossroads where blues guitarist Robert Johnson made his deal with the devil, discover a menagerie of Casters locked in cages, and uncover an evil in New Orleans that threatens to destroy them all.

This time, love might not be enough.

I really liked Dangerous Creatures!  It really makes me want to know what happens next.

Dangerous Deception picks up right where Dangerous Creatures left off, with the car accident, and Ridley missing, and everyone else trying to find her.  I liked that we had Ridley, Link and Lennox narrate the book, because we saw what was going with Link and Lennox trying to find Ridley, and what was going on with Ridley.

We didn’t need a recap, because you did get little bits and pieces of what happened in the previous book.  I was really surprised by the appearances of Amma, John and Liv, and it was really nice to see them.  No Ethan or Lena, but I’m oddly okay with that.  John and Liv’s appearance actually makes a lot of sense, given John’s past, how smart Liv is, and what’s currently going on.  There was still part of me that wished I had listened to Dangerous Creatures and Dream Dark (the prequel novella) just for a quick refresher (and maybe even Beautiful Creatures), but I don’t think it’s super-necessary.

Things in the caster world are a lot more interesting than I ever expected.  We are getting further and further in this Caster world, and we are most certainly seeing the dark side of this world.  I love that we’re seeing parts of the Caster world we never saw in Beautiful Creatures (BC)…which brings me to something that came up in Dangerous Deception. It came up that when Lena broke the order of things in BC, she really broke things.  It gave you an idea of how much things were broken in BC, and what happened elsewhere.  I’m still really curious about what things were like, but at least we get a glimpse of what had happened.

And everything with Silas and the experiments!  I can’t even wrap my mind around that, and yet I want to know more.

Of course, we can’t forget about the ending.  I was not expecting that ending!  It’s interesting, because there was something about this book that seemed really…resolved.  I’m trying to figure out if there’s even going to be a third book, because I can’t find any info on a third book- I don’t know if it’s because that information’s not available yet or if it’s because there isn’t going to be a third book. There is something about it where I’d be fine if it ended with this one, and yet there’s also enough there for another couple of books.

Ridley!  I felt for her, and everything that happened to her broke my heart, especially the ending.  As much as I wanted things to go differently, and for Ridley to make a different choice, I also understand why she made the choice she did.

I really liked Khristine Hvam and Kevin Collins!  I really need to see what else they’ve narrated, because I really like them!  As much as I like Kevin Collins, though, I’m also a little conflicted, because for me, he’s Ethan, and I’m still having a little trouble seeing him as Link or Lennox (but mostly Link).  But at the same time, I can’t picture anyone else narrating a Beautiful Creatures/Dangerous Creatures book.

4 stars.  I didn’t love it but Ridley broke my heart in this book, and I loved how we keep seeing all of these different sides to the Caster world.

Book: The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins, Narrated by Clare Corbett, Louise Brealey, and India Fisher

Published January 2015 by Penguin Audio|11 hours

Where I Got It: I borrowed the audio book from the library

Series: None

Genre: Adult Thriller

Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?

Compulsively readable, The Girl on the Train is an emotionally immersive, Hitchcockian thriller and an electrifying debut.

I feel like I’ve been hearing a lot about The Girl On The Train, and I’m glad I got to read it!

So, it’s a really interesting mystery (although it’s one that I figured out maybe 2/3 of the way through?), and while it wasn’t surprising when it was revealed, it was still fun to get to that point. Mostly because Rachel is such an unreliable character, and you’re never sure if what she figures out is completely accurate.  So even though I was pretty convinced of what happened to Megan, I still had my doubts about whether I was right or not.

I thought the end was somewhat predictable- probably because I correctly figured out what happened, at least to some degree- but this was a case where it honestly didn’t matter.  Partly because of how unreliable Rachel is, with her alcoholism, and the fact that she drinks to the point of blacking out and not remembering a single thing later on. But there is something compelling about the book, and I just really wanted to see what would happen.

It was also pretty immersive, and I felt like I was really in the book, which I think has a lot to do with the fact that I listened to it.  It made me wish (for probably the first and only time) that I had a longer drive to work so I could keep listening.  If you haven’t read it yet, I would definitely recommend the audio, because for some reason, The Girl On The Train works really well as an audio book.

Speaking of audio books: the narrators!  The book is narrated by Rachel, the main narrator of the book (Clare Corbett), Megan, who narrates fairly frequently (Louise Brealey) and Anna, who narrates sporadically (India Fisher). I’m not the biggest fan of multiple narrators, but it worked so well for this book, particularly with how Hawkins did it.  Rachel does narrate most of the book, but you get random sections from Megan and Anna, and I have no idea why it worked, but it did.

I’m glad they went with 3 different narrators for the audio, because I can’t imagine one person narrating all three women.  And it really helped distinguish between the three.  I did have to figure out who was who (this post was really helpful, plus they have excerpts).  I really liked who they selected as narrators- Corbett, Brealey and Fisher really brought Rachel, Megan and Anna to life, and they totally sounded like how I would expect the characters to sound.  I think Corbett was my favorite (probably because we hear her the most), but I would also listen to anything Brealey narrated.  Fisher was definitely my least favorite, and Anna was the character who I hated the most.

I hated Anna so much that I was glad we didn’t see her narrate more.  Because the more we saw of her, the more I hated her.  She came across as a vindictive, whiny spoiled brat, and…as weird as this is…I found myself yelling at her whenever we saw her.  The other characters, particularly Megan and Rachel, have a bit more to them than Anna did, and overall, it’s a good look at characters and why they act the way they do.

I’ve seen the comparisons to Gone Girl, but I won’t, because I haven’t read it, and I’m not comfortably with saying anything either way.

3 stars.  I liked it- it was really engrossing, and I wanted to keep listening, but I didn’t love it either.